Pablo Larraín is the 2017 recipient of the Stockholm Visionary Award. His latest film »Neruda« is a visually stunning and intelligently narrated biopic of the politically active poet Pablo Neruda during his exile in Argentina in 1948.

The Chilean director Pablo Larraín was born in 1976 in Santiago to a mother belonging to one of the wealthiest families in Chile, and a father who served as the president of a rightwing party supporting the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Perhaps it’s no wonder that he has dedicated most of his filmmaking career to telling stories about a country that has suffered from oppression and both moral and cultural decline for two decades.

Larraín’s directorial style is one of austere technique, relying predominantly on carefully elaborated and static images. These images are intrusive and penetrate the audience on a both a metaphysical and tactile plane. Although his characters sometimes seem like…